Facebook is scrambling to catch up to Google in open-sourcing AI code

In artificial intelligence research, free code garners goodwill from the community, talent, and bragging rights. So it’s no surprise that many of the companies investing in AI, like Facebook and Google, are racing to make their code open source early and often. On Aug. 25, Facebook announced that it would make public three tools integral to its image recognition software—the same AI that automatically tags photos and helps read the content of images to visually impaired users of its site. The social media company says that this kind technology could allow Facebook users to search for photos based on what they depict, without relying on the tags others had assigned to the images. Facebook also claims it could be used to identify the nutritional value of food just by taking…